*For those of you who don’t know, ‘a right charlie’ is slang for ‘a fool’.

‘Once upon a time there was a little girl who went to the Police Academy. But I took her away from all that and now she works for me. My name is Charlie…’

Charlie: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to buy cheap fabric for a muslin of MCalls 5815.

Karen: Right, Charlie. I’m on it!

I can’t even get that right. They must see me coming down Walthamstow market. I popped into Saeed Fabrics. It’s not a stall, it’s a shop – not the type that has a website, but definitely the type that has loads of fabrics. And a saleswoman with a silken tongue.

Saleswoman: ‘Are you looking for anything in particular?’

Karen, firmly: ‘No, no. Just looking.’

Saleswoman: ‘Let me show you these fabrics down here.’

Karen follows, thinking: Oh, you can show me, lady. But I’m not going to buy. I only want some cheap crap for my muslin.

Five minutes later, I walked out of the shop with two and half metres of this:

I don’t know if you can quite make it out, but that baby pink wool fabric has a fine butter yellow pattern woven into it. Now, here’s my reasoning. It really wasn’t that expensive: £3 ($4.52) a metre. The saleswoman reckons it’s 100% wool, but what type of 100% wool survives a trip through the washing machine? She must think I’m some kind of mug. (Er…. Like the type of mug who buys wool for a muslin?) Anyway, anyway – let’s get back to the price. It means that even if I do use this charming fabric – ahem, I mean cheap crap for a muslin – and it all goes wrong, well… It’s only £7.50 ($11.30) -worth of disaster. I mean, that’s not the end of the world, is it? And hey! If the muslin works, I’ll have a jacket for £7.50. Everyone’s a winner! Except I won’t be able to follow Sunni‘s top tip of only using wide stitches and not fussing over detail finishes on a muslin. I’ll have to make this properly – and possibly disastrously.

It’s fine, it’s fine. There’s logic squeezed in somewhere alongside the madness. I promise you there is. You just have to screw your eyes up and peer really hard to see it. But pulling a face like that makes you look a Right Charlie… Best not to.

1 Response to Charlie’s Angel or A Right Charlie*?

Great writing on this blog! My view on muslins is that you need to make them in a (preferably cheap) fabric similar to that which you’d make the final garment in. Otherwise they just show where the lines will sit rather than how the garment *might* hang. Good luck with the jacket, those pockets are looking fine!